A Pole’s woes; the “clásico del Pacífico”; plans for Samuel

More Euros. The Germans look decent … the Spanish look very good but depended on an Italian “own” goal for their second victory … the English look putrid … the Dutch and French played a tedious, scoreless draw … the French have yet to score (they did provoke an Austrian “own” goal; the Euros’ official tally, so far, is five).

Poland’s excellent but perennially luckless goalkeeper, Wojciech Szczesny, committed a penalty-kick foul with his face. He only received a yellow card.

(I first saw him in the opening match of the 2012 Euros; he committed a delicate penalty-kick foul then, too, and was ejected.)

The Copa América has begun. Argentina defeated Canada. Chileans and Peruvians kicked each other all through their scoreless draw; quite a few were incapacitated (their rivalry is known as the Pacific Classic).

Frodo et al. have ventured into Moria.

Samuel watches Scooby-Doo.

He was waitlisted by and then accepted into our preferred preschool. A relief; but I grieve that this summer will be his last before he heads out into the world.

A fire-pit

I’ve added Olympic National Park (Washington) to the previous entry’s list.

To see a map of the Olympic Rain Shadow, click here and scroll down. The rain shadow covers Victoria, British Columbia, a place that seemed curiously arid when I visited fifteen years ago; now I know why.

Speaking of Olympian mountains, I learned that Olympus Mons, on Mars, is about as large as Poland.

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We bought a portable fire-pit for burning the wood that accumulated in our yard these last two years, and for placing our lawn-chairs around, roasting wieners in, grilling cucumbers over, etc.

Samuel’s much-studied book, Cooking with Foil, would have been useful had he not torn out the pages.

Not that we’d’ve been guided by it anytime soon. We’re unable to keep a fire going longer than five minutes. Certain twigs and sections of rotten logs burn, and the rest just don’t.

Last night, Daniel wandered off with the poker, and we crept around in the dark, looking for it with our phone-flashlights. No luck. We searched again today and were about to give up when Karin lowered her eyes and noticed it in plain view.

Poker or no poker, we are hapless.

Karin tried stimulating the fire with her breath; she extinguished it. I told her she should never carry the Olympic torch. (Not that I’ve kept the fire going any better.)

Our lawn-chairs sank pretty far down into the mud.

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This aftertoon I watched forty-one-year-old Pepe, of the immortals, in the UEFA Champions League. He played well. He’s a thug, but I like him; as John Huston says in Chinatown, “Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” I watched through a thicket of climbing, niggling children. Daniel begged to watch “hungry planets” on YouTube, and Samuel, who is susceptible to advertising, kept asking for Heineken.

Fantastic beasts

Here is an interesting note about the Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko. It says that her themes and artistic style, as well as her country’s circumstances, were similar to those of Pablo Picasso. (Picasso, it turns out, admired Prymachenko.)

Not an outlandish connection; but right now, I’m primed to associate Prymachenko’s art with Blake’s paintings of fantastic beasts.

(As I’ve mentioned here and here, the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk has explicitly connected her own work with Blake’s.)

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An update on our infestation:

Jasper has caught and killed three mud-room mice.

Ziva also has been hunting. She caught a mud-room mouse and brought it into the house. It ran away before she got around to killing it, though.

Since then, we haven’t seen any trace of that mouse. It probably didn’t survive long.

Karin found the hole in the mud-room through which the mice have been entering from the yard. We’ll put copper wool over the hole. That should keep them out.

A wedding

Continuing on the subject of gluttony, yesterday was my “last hurrah,” at least for the season: I made two trips down a Polish buffet line. (If anything has a claim to being “South Bend cuisine,” it’s Polish food.) The occasion was my mother-in-law’s wedding. You’ll recall that she was widowed in 2020. Now she is married to Scott, her dead husband’s ex-roommate. It was a canny move. When Rick died, she griefstrickenly bequeathed Rick’s guns to Scott; now, presumably, she has got them back. Karin and Samuel and I rode to the wedding with McKenzie, Karin’s mom’s ex-foster daughter. McKenzie wore sweatpants and swigged from a half-gallon of milk and talked on her phone to her imprisoned boyfriend. “I have a gift card,” she told him. “I’m going to sell it to buy you another phone card.” It was a cheerful conversation. Like Scott and unlike the rest of my mother-in-law’s family, McKenzie is a happy-go-lucky sort of person. She gleefully told her boyfriend that her tattoo artist had just been jailed.

We also had a delicious venison stew, courtesy of my mother-in-law’s Uncle Fred, who shoots deer and hangs them up in his front yard. Uncle Fred preached the sermon. Karin said it was about sin (Uncle Fred is another happy-go-lucky sort of person). I didn’t hear it; Samuel started howling as soon as the bride walked up the aisle, so I took him to a Sunday School room where he played with toy cars and I read Agatha Christie. Karin told me not to bring a book to the wedding, but I did anyway; one never knows. I don’t think Karin’s mom noticed. She seemed to be relishing everything else that was going on.

Drive your plow over the bones of the dead

Scant rain has fallen the last two weeks. Large sections of the lawn have become tawny.

My neighbors water their grass. I am averse to doing this, as it encourages grass to grow, which makes for more frequent mowing.

Yesterday, I sheared the back lawn down to its nubs.

The lawn already was rather short. On this occasion, such a small length was cut off the top, I didn’t have to rake any of it into piles.

This is exactly the situation I aspire to, as far as the lawn is concerned.

Tonight there is rain and thunder. I am out on the back porch with Samuel, Jasper, and Ziva. Ziva, especially, is fond of the porch. When I go back inside the house, I have to lure her with treats.

The book I am reading – Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead – is by Olga Tokarczuk, of Poland, a recent Nobel Prize winner.

In this book, villagers keep popping off, slasher-movie style. The narrator, a semiretired schoolteacher and estate caretaker, suspects that the perpetrators are Animals (she capitalizes a good many common nouns, to charming effect). In particular, she suspects the Deer, who are often poached. She alleges that their motive for committing these Murders is Revenge. (I am reminded of M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, The Happening.)

The narrator has hobbies. She translates the poetry of William Blake. She is a firm believer in Astrology. She writes letters to the Police, explaining to them who has been committing the Murders.

She is eccentric but quite self-aware, and her narration is matter-of-fact. This makes the book very funny.

Also, the book is short. And yet I’ve been reading it since before the libraries closed for the pandemic. I’m forcing myself to finish it by Friday, which is the final due date after several renewals.

I find myself wondering how the narrator would judge me. I’d like to come out well, by her lights. She’s quite a humane person. I eat meat, which perhaps she’d not condemn absolutely (it’s the Order of this poorly designed Universe that some Creatures must survive by eating Others).

The narrator also despises Lawn Mowing.

Los pibes

The last bits of my dissertation, not counting revisions, need to be turned in around the beginning of next week. Meanwhile, I continue to apply for academic jobs. It amazes me that so many are posted so near to the beginning of the next school year.

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After starting slowly, with a draw and a defeat in the first two group games, Ecuador has progressed to the quarterfinal round of the men’s U-20 World Cup in Poland.

Ecuador’s opponent in the quarterfinals: the USA.

(I’m not saying that one side is morally better than the other, but one is like Luke Skywalker and the other is like Darth Vader.)

Los pibes, as the youths are called, seem especially bad at kicking penalties. They missed one against the Japanese, whom they outplayed and should have beaten, and another against the Italians, whom they also outplayed and with whom they should have drawn.

They did convert two penalty kicks against the Uruguayans. They used two different shooters who followed the same strategy: shooting low and centrally into space vacated by the goalkeeper.

Not very inspiring. I hope the quarterfinal doesn’t have to be settled with a shootout.

Some frightening teams

Leave it to Alejandro Moreno, the worst commentator I’ve ever listened to, to defend Neymar for weeping out on the field … like a spoiled child … after scoring a tap-in against Costa Rica.

If the Brazilians win this World Cup – and, with all of their talent, they’re poised to do so – I hope they win with Neymar on the bench.

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The Colombians may have lost their first game, but yesterday they showed that they’re one of the planet’s scariest teams. They turned on the style in their rout of Poland.

The Colombians also have enough talent to win this World Cup.

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The Uruguayans have enough talent and more than enough grit. They won’t fear anyone. They’re used to grinding out results, which bodes well for their fate in the later rounds.

They ground out results against Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Then, this morning, they decided not only to clinch the first place in Group A, but to emphasize how dangerous they are. And so they casually routed the host nation.

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Another frightening team is Germany – not for having played well, but for having come back from the dead against the Swedes.

Before Toni Kroos scored his last-minute goal, the citizens of all the other countries had been licking their chops. The Mexicans, especially: their team would’ve qualified for the next round if Sweden had held Germany to a draw.

Instead, Group F remains unsettled. Germany, Mexico, and Sweden all will be excellently positioned if they win their respective upcoming games. Theoretically, even the Koreans could advance.

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Also frightening – but still unproven – are the Croatians, the Belgians, and the English, all of whom have easily qualified for the knockout stage. They all looked quite good against their group opponents, but I wonder how they’d fare against Colombia or Germany, or even Mexico.

Some links pertaining to the World Cup

It’s the summer’s solstice, but you wouldn’t know it from South Bend’s dark skies and pouring rain.

In Russia, the World Cup has continued its string of bizarre matches.

Colombia was upset after suffering an early red card against Japan.

Poland was upset by Senegal, who scored a wacky second goal.

Spain defeated Iran with another wacky goal.

Argentina was badly upset by Croatia.

I could discuss many more games, in minute detail. But I’ll leave it at this: general weirdness is this World Cup’s main theme.

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The trappings have been more wonderful than the games themselves. The crowds, in national dress, have lent their usual pageantry. The stadiums also have been lovely to behold – even on TV; even the one in Yekaterinburg, which has seats built on high stilts outside the stadium proper. (Yekaterinburg, I learned today, is east of the Urals, which makes this World Cup the second one held in Asia.)

And here is Telemundo’s rousing musical theme for the tournament. It’s played during every commercial break. It builds gradually. At the end, it introduces vocals, sounding very Russian.

A sputtering start

Who will seize control in this World Cup? So far, none of the “powers” has seemed capable. Germany has lost to Mexico; Portugal and Spain have drawn against each other (these teams have shown perhaps the best potential); Argentina and Brazil have drawn against Iceland and Switzerland, respectively. Only France has won – against Australia – but hardly in a convincing fashion.

Russia, the host nation, scored five times against the dismal Saudis without playing especially well. I expect the Russians to qualify for the next round, and then to get knocked out.

Only Uruguay – not a “power,” but still a team to be reckoned with – defeated its opponent, Egypt, in its usual manner. It eked out a 1–0 victory in added time, with a goal by a central defender. Uruguay will be very comfortable in games like those that have occurred so far.

Belgium, England, Colombia, and Poland have yet to play any games. It’s too early to say how they will do.

The British situation

Is the UK doing away with council housing?

Farewell, then, to the Britain of my imagination. The UK’d might as well get rid of its fish-and-chips shops and its London fog.

Not all Britons are very keen on council housing. I even happen to agree with those who, in 2008, opposed the inclusion of council flats in luxurious buildings.

Council flats shouldn’t have a hint of luxury about them. They ought to be squarely on the dingy side.

If council flats weren’t dingy, we wouldn’t have such brilliant movies as the Mike Leigh-directed All or Nothing or Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and Red Road …

or such brilliant songs as the Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds” …

(see these reminiscences of the Orb’s two members, Youth and Dr. Alex Paterson, about composing music, together with the KLF, inside a council flat).

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As I type this, Ireland Rep. are outplaying and defeating Sweden in the Euros. Yesterday, Ulster lost narrowly to Poland, and the day before that, Wales beat Slovakia. On the whole it’s been a good showing by the British Isles.

On the whole.

The English continue to disappoint their backers. During their game against the Russians, they were lions in possession but mouses in front of their opponents’ net. They squeaked in just one goal, a free kick, only for the Russians to equalize at the death. Then the Russian supporters chased the English supporters up and down the stadium and beat them up.

The Swedes have just equalized against the Irish.

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“I’m looking forward to Belgium’s game against the Italians,” I tell Karin. “The Belgians have been playing wonderfully these last few years.”

“Yes,” says Karin. “It must be because of Poirot.”